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Belgium's Rwandan genocide trail
BRUSSELS, June 8 (Reuters) - A Belgian court on Friday delivered guilty verdicts against four Rwandans accused of taking part in the small central African nation's 1994 genocide.
Here is some background and a brief chronology of events leading up to the trial by a Belgian jury, the first of its kind outside Rwanda, where Hutu extremists killed an estimated 800,000 Tutsis and moderate Hutus during three months of ethnic bloodletting.
- Hutus outnumber Tutsis, who lost power as an elite when Rwanda won independence from Belgium in 1962.
- The 1994 massacre has been described as the 20th century's third worst genocide after the Jewish Holocaust in Nazi Germany and the Ottoman Turk massacre of ethnic Armenians in 1915.
- An international criminal court set up in Tanzania sentenced former Rwandan Prime Minister Jean Kambanda to life in prison in 1998 for genocide.
- That court has since made seven more convictions.
- Thirty-seven suspects are on, or awaiting, trial there.
- Rwanda's overcrowded prisons hold more than 115,000 people suspected of taking part in the massacres.
- The country's courts have tried about 3,000 cases, handing death sentences to more than 500 and acquitting about 700.
CHRONOLOGY
- October, 1990 - Tutsi-led rebels invade Rwanda from neighbouring Uganda demanding right to resettle thousands of Tutsi refugees who fled country shortly after independence.
- June 1993 - Belgium passes law adopting Geneva Convention's war crimes statute, empowering courts to try war criminals.
- August 4, 1993 - The Hutu government and Tutsi rebels sign an accord in the northern Tanzanian town of Arusha to end years of civil war, allowing for power-sharing and the return home of refugees. The government of President Juvenal Habyarimana is slow in implementing accord protocols.
- April 6, 1994 - Habyarimana, a Hutu, dies in crash after plane is hit by rocket in Kigali.
- April 7 - Hutu soldiers, militia and mobs hunt down Tutsis and Hutu moderates as Tutsi rebels advance into country.
- Ten Belgian soldiers guarding Rwandan prime minister and Habyarimana critic Agathe Uwilingiyimana are disarmed, tortured and killed along with Uwilingiyimana.
- April 10 - Eight Belgian planes carrying 800 troops arrive in Kigali to reinforce evacuation of foreigners.
- April 21 - Hutu extremists launch first attack against Tutsi refugees at Benedictine convent near Butare where Sisters Gertrude (Consolata Mukangango) and Maria Kisito (Julienne Mukabutera) live. They eventually kill about 5,000 people.
- May - Vincent Ntezimana leaves Rwanda for Belgium.
- June - Alphonse Higaniro leaves Rwanda for Belgium.
- July 1 - Sisters Gertrude and Maria Kisito leave Rwanda. Arrive in Belgium a month later at a convent in Maredret.
- July - Belgian Examining Judge Damien Vandermeersch opens investigation against Higaniro after genocide survivors and victims' relatives file complaint alleging murder, crimes against humanity and genocide.
- November 8 - U.N. Security Council approves international court for Rwandan war criminals in Arusha, Tanzania. Prosecutor makes first indictment two weeks later.
- April 27, 1995 - Higaniro and Ntezimana arrested in Belgium and jailed for a year as part of Vandermeersch's probe.
- July 3 - Sister Gertrude files complaint against weekly Solidaire for accusing her of helping Hutus kill Tutsis at convent.
- January 1996 - Belgian examining judge charges two sisters with collaborating with Hutu killers at convent.
- February 1999 - Belgium Parliament amends law to allow court to try genocide and crimes against humanity cases regardless of where committed and nationality of defendants.
- April - Swiss military court sentences ex-Rwandan mayor Fulgence Niyontese to life in prison for war crimes -- the first Western court to convict a Rwandan genocide suspect. Appeals court later cuts sentence to 14 years.
- April 17, 2001 - Belgian jury trial opens against the two sisters, Ntezimana and Higaniro.
(Additional reporting by Simon Denyer in Nairobi, Kenya)
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